Should you do sprints at the end of a session?
Sprinting tired won't make players faster, but it prepares them for the end of the match. When to train speed, where to place these sprints and how to dose them.
Thibaud C. · Fitness coach · Last updated: September 29, 2026
End of the session, tired players: sprints are launched "to gain speed". To develop speed, it is the wrong moment. Yet these sprints do have their place at the end of the session, but for a different goal: preparing players for what happens at the end of a match.
❌ The mistake — placing sprints at the end of the session in the belief that they develop pure speed or explosiveness.
Why it's a problem
When tired, the player can no longer reach top speed: they sprint at 80 or 90% of their capacity. Yet pure speed only improves by going as fast as possible. At the end of the session, you are therefore working on something else, the ability to repeat sprints under fatigue, but you are not making the player faster.
So the mistake is not sprinting at the end of the session: it is expecting a speed gain from it. To get faster, you have to be fresh.
To understand — two goals, two moments
Speed and explosiveness depend above all on the nervous system, which commands the muscles to contract quickly and forcefully, all at the same time. This command is fastest when the player is fresh: that is when you try to go faster. A flat-out sprint also draws on an immediate energy reserve, which empties in a few seconds and takes several minutes to rebuild.
The end of the match, on the other hand, is played on tired legs: decisive sprints also come in the final minutes, and muscle injuries occur more often at the end of each half, when fatigue sets in. Sprints at the end of the session reproduce these conditions: the body gets used to sprinting while tired, which can help protect it on match day, provided the dose is increased gradually.
| Goal | Moment | How |
|---|---|---|
| Develop pure speed | Start of the session, right after the warm-up | Fresh player, short all-out sprints, full recovery |
| Prepare for the end of the match (prevention) | End of the session | A few sprints under fatigue, in small doses, increased week by week |
What to do instead
- To develop speed: place sprints and explosiveness at the start of the session, right after the warm-up, with full recovery.
- To prepare for the end of the match: add a few deliberate sprints under fatigue at the end of the session. This is prevention, not speed development.
- Measure them out: few repetitions at first, then increase week by week. Never a big volume all at once.
- Avoid them the day before a match, and for a player returning from injury until they have regained their full-speed sprints.
A concrete example
To gain speed: warm-up → 6-8 sprints of 20-30 m with full recovery → THEN play and volume. The player sprints fresh, at 100%: that is what makes them faster.
To prepare for the end of the match: the session runs as normal, then 3-4 sprints of 20-30 m under fatigue, with about a minute of recovery between each. Start with this small volume, then increase it gradually from one week to the next. You are not trying to beat a time: you are getting the body used to what it will experience in the final minutes of the match.
✅ Key point — sprinting at the end of the session does not make you faster: for that, you need to be fresh. But measured, progressive sprints under fatigue prepare players for the end of the match and contribute to injury prevention.